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Thursday, April 3, 2003 
 samsungusa.com
Suggested Price: $1,000
By Wilson Rothman
If you're in the market for home-theater-in-a-box, you're probably either shopping for a second DVD system that can be confined to a bedroom or cramped apartment, or you want to get into the home-theater thing but are afraid of putting a system together piece by piece. Starting several years ago with Sony's DVD Dream systems, there have been many nice kits. But until recently, more attention was paid to the DVD player/receiver unit than to the five speakers and subwoofer that must deliver the theatrical surround-sound. In the spirit of Tech TIME's spring music package, I decided to review the HT-SK6. It's a system whose high-powered DVD player/surround-sound amplifier was built specifically to support the included speakers and subwoofer - the Klipsch Quintet II Micro System which, when sold separately, can cost as much as $900.
Like many home-theater-in-a-box systems, the HT-SK6 is remarkably easy to set up. I admit, I've had practice, but this thing went from sealed in the box to fully operational in 15 minutes. Attach the speakers and subwoofer to the player/amp, then plug that into your TV and you're done. Picture and sound are beyond reproach — really, you'd need instruments to figure out the quality limitations of the speakers and the progressive-scan DVD player. Like most surround-sound systems, it plays Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 tracks, and when you play normal CDs, MP3-CDs or VHS tapes (from a connected VCR), you can turn the stereo sound into surround sound using the Dolby ProLogic II processor. It really improved many CDs, although on MP3 files, it tends to bring out the distortion caused by file compression.
Probably the biggest problem I had is that the system is a DVD player first, and a CD/MP3 player second. When you put in a CD, there's a delay before you hear anything, and advancing through the tracks is like wading through molasses. MP3-CDs can have over 150 songs, and their file names are displayed on the TV screen, but you can't scroll through tracks very quickly, and you can't sort them by artist, title or album. I did find the "random" function, but it wasn't easy.
But never mind me, I'm just nitpicking. You'll be hard pressed to find anything that looks and sounds this good at the $1,000 mark. With 500 watts of total system power, the booming HT-SK6 won't be Samsung's best-kept secret for much longer.
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